I was just curious if anyone here has had the chance to look at Windows 7 yet? I installed the RC a while back, but ended up getting rid of it because I didn't want to have to re-format my computer later on, and mess with losing all of the data I would have created at that point.

Luckily, through my work I'm able to get it pretty cheaply, so I got a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, and I must say I approve. I never used Vista, and I haven't really had the time to use 7 extensively(I just installed it last night), but I will say that from what I've seen, I don't regret jumping from WIndows XP at all.

Resources-wise, it doesn't appear to be a hog at all. My computer is 4 years old, and has pretty low-end specs. (Pentium 4HT 2.6ghz, 1 gb of ram. ATI Radeon X300 graphics card with 128MB or ram) Yet it still boots up in under 20 seconds, and doesn't really have any lags to speak of, that I've seen.

Driver support has been pretty good, especially considering it just came out. The only piece of hardware I don't think I'll be able to get to work is my TV tuner, but it is from Windows 98-era, and was only like $35 at wal-mart back when I first got it like 10 years ago.

The only gripe I have is that I wish they made things simpler on the file sharing front. If you have more than one computer with windows 7, you can use the Home Groups feature to share files, but I haven't been able to find where to share files and printers with XP computers, yet. (Again, I just installed it yesterday)

I have to say, I really hate the new start menu. More than that, I hate that Windows 7 doesn't allow you to get rid of it if you don't want it. The only way currently that you can remove it is by using a third-party tool called "CSMenu," which isn't really all that great of a tool to begin with.

I don't get it at all. Microsoft really needs to get over this "Trust us, you'll like it. Don't like it? Too bad. We know what's best for you" type of mentality. Not everyone does, or will.

Its things like this that kept people from switching to vista and will end up keeping people from switching to 7.

Not sure what you like about the old start menu. Everything about the new one is better.

And everyone is gonna have to switch eventually. Windows xp is, what, 9 or 10 years old now? Either that or they could switch to OSX where they get even less customization and more "do what we want you to" ;D Or they could go to Linux and get all the customization they ever wanted, but we all know that's not happening anytime soon.

I dunno man, I disagree. While I do like having the search bar integrated with the start bar, so that you can just hit "Windows" and start typing to get to the program you want, I also like having the menus expand, rather than being compacted all into one area. I like being able to explore what windows has out there for me. By making the menu this way, it makes it harder to know everything that they have available. I remember using 7 for like two weeks before i finally got down to the... I think it was Accessories menu to see all of the new system tools that they have.

I won't ever go to OSX because as you said, it allows for even less customization than the new Windows. I have switched to Fedora and Ubuntu before(as well as Knoppix and a few other live CD distros), but I can never have it as my primary OS because, beyond just the hoops you have to jump through to get it to do what you want, my wife isn't very "tech-savvy" so there's no way it would work for us.

In the end, I ended up reverting back to XP for the time being, until 7 gets a service pack out there because I kept having problems where 7 would crash when I came back from sleep mode. I'm assuming it just has to do with my old hardware.

I guess I'm just an old-timey bastard that refuses change. Now get off my lawn!

Some people are making the gradual shift to googles OS which uses the cloud but also offline at once. We are moving into the cloud anyway so in a few short years I imagine most people living on the cloud,the computer industry has made it clear that is where they are wanting to go.

We already rely on it for email and now even backing up data like carbonite next step for OS's makes sense but for the google OS you must have a SSD. And 7 I only have the w7 tp from Windows X website but I also follow Paul Thurott on his podcasts on twit.tv and his website and I have liked what I have seen and heard and the limited features I have and the look is awesome.

MS has been getting things right lately..Bing is great,Zune HD is great and now W7.

Apple is becoming the new company everyone loves to hate and Google is becoming the new Apple who everyone loves and challenging both MS and Apple and doing well at it.

I went ahead and reinstalled 7 to my computer. I read online that a possible workaround would be just to have your hard drive never shut off, so I was ready to try that, but so far I haven't had the issues with it randomly restarting on coming out of sleep mode. I'm not sure if MS released a patch for this problem, or if I just did something different with my install and setup this time around, but everything seems to be working.

Agent Of Fortune wrote:I went ahead and reinstalled 7 to my computer. I read online that a possible workaround would be just to have your hard drive never shut off, so I was ready to try that, but so far I haven't had the issues with it randomly restarting on coming out of sleep mode. I'm not sure if MS released a patch for this problem, or if I just did something different with my install and setup this time around, but everything seems to be working.

Glad to hear it's working out this time. It pains me to see anyone sticking to an OS as old as XP when 7 is so good. The worst part is I'm sure there are people still using windows 98 or 2000 because they're afraid to upgrade.